218 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



the beast of prey crouches down on his haunches 

 and has a last long and lingering taste of the 

 entrails of his kill. It is at first often very 

 difficult to distinguish what the half-hidden 

 carnivore really is, and more than once I have 

 felt my heart leap with joy, only to find a moment 

 afterwards that what might have been the 

 King of Beasts was only a slinking cur, an 

 animal that is held in contempt all over Africa. 



But big-game hunting, like every other game 

 worth playing, has many disappointments as 

 well as joys, so I watched the brute till he 

 was well-nigh out of sight, sent a final curse 

 after him, and then returned to camp and 

 breakfast. 



The sun was high above the frowning ridge 

 of the Kikuyu escarpment when we moved 

 onwards again towards the wall of the Mau. 

 Somewhat refreshed by an eighteen hours' halt, 

 the oxen were driven from the muddy pool that 

 had proved the elixir of life to them, and were 

 yoked in. Jusef Jama, our Somali headman, 

 soon had the impedimenta aboard the wagon, 

 or on the heads of the " pagazis " (porters), and 

 with much rumbling and creaking we started 

 off again. Our wagon driver was a little Masai, 

 who had gained his knowledge of " dusselbooms " 

 and " yokeskeys " with a small colony of South 

 African farmers who had settled in the Kedong 

 Valley; and an admirable driver he proved 

 himself. He had acquired an extensive vocabu- 

 lary of Dutch words such as are generally used 

 by transport riders in the Transvaal and the 

 Free State. The majority of these epithets are 

 quite unprintable, but they seem to work 

 wonders with oxen. In fact, Dutch is the only 

 language which cattle, mules and donkeys 



